Most U.S. citizens suspect the official story is not true, but this healthy skepticism did not translate into popular understanding of how and why President Kennedy was assassinated. A half century later, the U.S. mainstream media - and the liberal alternative media - still promote the “lone gunman” propaganda.

Fall back to the Official Story: a second gunman, but backed by Cuba

OK, we know there was a second gunman, but Oswald was a Communist sympathizer so we had to cover up the conspiracy because otherwise we would risk a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis that could lead to a nuclear war (since the public would demand a revenge attack on Cuba, supposedly). This claim was very persuasive shortly after the assassination in discouraging political elites from looking closer at the facts. President Johnson used this argument to cajole Supreme Court Justice Warren to head the alleged investigative commission.

Limited Hang Out: admit part of the truth to cover up the full truth

A deeper fallback claim is the Mafia killed President Kennedy, and the US government was embarrassed to admit this because the CIA used the Mob to wage war on Castro's Cuba. But this is only part of the truth. The Mafia had important roles in the assassination plot, but the mafia wasn't involved in the stand down of normal protective policies of the President, nor is the mafia in charge of the political and media coverup of the crime.

Best Evidence: a coup to keep Kennedy from ending the Cold War

Why Kennedy was removed from office (the motive) is more important than who was shooting in Dealey Plaza, even though Oswald wasn't one of the shooters.
President Kennedy had changed his mind on the Cold War, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he resisted calls from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to start a nuclear war.
He called for nuclear disarmament, a different relationship with the "Third World," signed an order to start pulling troops out of Viet Nam, pushed through the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and offered to convert the "Moon Race" into a cooperative effort with the Soviet Union. Merging the space programs would also have reduced the risk of a nuclear war with rockets.
JFK vowed to scatter the CIA into a thousand pieces. The CIA (and military intelligence) scattered JFK into a thousand pieces.

Disinformation: used to discredit skepticism of the official story

There is a long list of false claims about the conspiracy to remove Kennedy from office that are flashy but false. Some claim a video shows the limo driver killing Kennedy (the limo driver slowed down just before the shots were fired, but he didn't fire any of them). Some claim the Zapruder film was faked, but the leading advocate for this view also claims the Moon landings were faked and the video of the planes hitting the World Trade Center were altered in real time by television networks to cover up the real projectiles, so this "fake Zapruder film" claim can be safely ignored. There's also a faction of white supremacist Holocaust deniers who claim the Israeli Mossad did it. These distractions are similar to the flares emitted by a plane that is under attack from a heat seeking missile - the decoys confuse the attacker and it usually goes off course.

President Kennedy vowed to scatter the CIA into a thousand pieces,
the CIA (and the military high command) scattered President Kennedy into a thousand pieces

The primary motive was to stop Kennedy's efforts to turn off the Cold War. The President changed his mind about the military industrial complex once in office, especially after the Bay of Pigs debacle and worse, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy had started efforts to scale back the War on Viet Nam and initiated an effort to make the "Race to the Moon" a cooperative venture with the Soviet Union -- which were reversed by President Johnson.

On November 22, 1963, the United States of America had a military
coup d'etat -- an event that most people chose not to see (a society of
"not see's").

President Kennedy was removed after changing his mind on the Cold War.
He refused to invade Cuba during the Bay of Pigs debacle, refused to
start nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis (even though his military
advisors were demanding it), stopped atmospheric nuclear testing and began
the process to withdraw troops from Vietnam.

In his farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower warned that
we should beware the unchecked power of the military-industrial complex.
This speech is one of the greatest in American history, and prescient
in understanding what was coming. Now, in 2005, the future that Eisenhower
warned about is the content of the daily news.

The removal of Kennedy (and later, of his brother on the threshold of
his victory in the Presidential campaign) led to the escalation of the
Vietnam war, Watergate, the
1980 "October Surprise,"the
Iran-Contra scandals, BCCI, the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm (1991
war on Iraq), allowing the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Oklahoma
City, the stolen election in Florida in 2000, 9/11 and the anthrax attacks
on the Democrats and the media, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
and the stolen 2004 Presidential election (to cite a few of the many scandals
since 1963).

If our society is going to shift course to use our resources for our
survival -- instead of military dominance -- we will have to convert the
military budget toward peaceful purposes. A key part of the understanding
needed to shift course is an honest discussion of the events in Dallas
-- and how those events led to the permanent warfare
national security state.

Who, How and Why

Perhaps the simplest question to understand who perpetrated the assassination
of President Kennedy is to ask

"Who had the power to change the motorcade route?
(the original route would not have passed next to the Book Depository
nor the famous "grassy knoll")

That's the real question, isn't it - why? The
how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba,
the Mafia - keeps them guessing like some sort of parlor game. Prevents
them from asking the most important question: Why was Kennedy killed?
Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?

Perhaps the simplest question to understand the level of official complicity
in 9/11, the current "elephant in the living room" of American
politics, is to ask

Who had the power to suppress warnings from allied governments, FBI
agents and other sources that 9/11 was imminent, and then to schedule war games, including a plane-into-building exercise, during 9/11 that resembled actual events?

The underlying reasons for JFK and 9/11 were similar - endless war that
provides vast profit and the excuse to convert aspirations for genuine
democracy into an Orwellian state. The success of the coup against JFK
emboldened the perpetrators to commit many more crimes: the war on Viet
Nam, Watergate, toppling democracies in Chile and other countries, the
1980 October Surprise, Iran-Contra, the wars in Central America in the
1980s, the invasion of Panama, the Desert Storm massacre (Saddam Hussein
was lured by the US to attack Kuwait, and perhaps 300,000 people were
killed in that war), etc.

The Military Industrial Complex

Perhaps the best way to commemorate the anniversary is to read President
Kennedy's speech given June 10, 1963 at American University where he called for an end to
the Cold War. It is sad to fantasize about what this change of direction
could have meant for the United States, and the world, if the shifts recommended
in this speech had been allowed to happen. It is not too late to redirect
the immense flow of wealth and talent and physical resources invested
in the military-industrial complex toward programs aimed at ending hunger,
poverty, injustice, global warming, wasteful energy practices, etc.

But even if the new Democratic majority in Congress was able to perform
the miracle of radical transformation for survival and cooperation instead
of dominance, there is no way to avoid the problems created by decades
of denial and suppression of efforts to make these needed shifts. It is
too late to have a painless transition, but it is not too late to dedicate
civilization for life instead of mass extinction. Survival of the human
race - and the tens of millions of other species - is not a political,
partisan, nationalistic issue - it is the most important task that we
all must work together to achieve. The lesson that our species is slowly
learning is that our survival is dependent on others surviving, too --
the interconnected realities of the global economy, communications and
weapons technologies suggest that the whole human race will either evolve
together or go extinct together. This is the opposite strategy from the
militaristic approach of countless counts, kings, shahs, Popes, Presidents
for Life, Prime Ministers, Chancellors, Party Chairmen, Dear Leaders and
other titles created by extremely hierarchical political systems that
assume that one group's well being depends on oppressing another's.

One of the most important policy statements in US history. If its goals had been implemented, it is likely the Cold War could have been ended in the second Kennedy term, without the disastrous War on Viet Nam, the Watergate scandal, the divisiveness of the polarization of the country, and the waste of trillions of dollars toward useless weaponry. The fact that this shift was not allowed to happen (through the pre-emptive removal of the President) is the same reason why decades of warnings about the environmental crisis were deliberately ignored by the powers who really run the United States.

It is revealing that the American University speech got more coverage in the Soviet Union's state controlled media than in the supposedly free and independent media in the United States. A few months later, the acquiescence of the media in the official narrative of Kennedy's assassination was perhaps the most important component of the cover-up. Those who dared to kill the President would not have dared if they did not understand the media would go along with the coup. It has taken much more energy to continue a complex cover-up for decades than it took to kill Kennedy.

The fact that the cover-up continues to this day, over forty years after
the fact, is the best evidence of all that an organization, not an individual,
was responsible, and that the organization has powerful control over
the media and exercises it to keep the lid on this case

My Beef With Chomsky (Michael Morrissey, Sep 2000) www.geocities.com/mdmorrissey/chomcorr.htm
Concerning Chomsky's arrogant evasions of fact and truly bizarre double
standards about trusting official sources, in regards to several critical
conspiracy issues (including the JFK assassination). Also, he points out
Chomsky's change of mind from his keen interest in the JFK assassination
in the late 60s, something he doesn't seem to have anything to say about
these days.

Russell shows his obvious fascination with intelligence agents, the “spooks” who inhabit that netherworld between observable reality and the covert world we civilians rarely encounter, who perform operations most Americans know nothing about, sometimes to their later chagrin. A character who called himself by the pseudonym “Captain Sam” quite aptly describes why pursuing the truth through the people closest to the crime can be a frustrating endeavor:

“[T]here’s one thing you should know from the start. Half of what I’ll tell you might be the truth, and the other half bullshit. But all of it is what I was told. That’s part of the game in the intelligence business. You confuse your own operatives with false information; maybe nobody knows the full truth about a particular assignment.”

And therein lies the rub of investigating covert operations. Even those who want to help can unintentionally mislead, despite the best of intentions. And then there are the others, who mislead on purpose. Russell appears to have walked a fine line between letting the spooks have their say without giving weight to statements that contradict provable facts about the case. ....

One of my favorite articles in the book was “The Media, the CIA, and the Cover-Up.” Russell recounts key points in the media history of the case, and shows the direct connections between key stories in the cover-up and the CIA assets behind those stories. I’ve longed to read just such an article for years. It was a pleasure to find the people behind the media cover-up and their connections to the Agency so clearly laid out here.

1 COMMENT:
ewastud said...
I think that unraveling the mystery behind JFK's assassination, one has to think like the perpetrators who must have planned the cover-up before the assassination itself, and worked backwards. For instance the "only three shots were fired" claim had to have been established by the perps before the assassination itself and became a fixed point around which all other official "facts" surrounding the event had to be reconciled with, no matter what or how facts would have to be twisted -- hence the ludicrous claim about the path of the "magic bullet."

The official claim (and so difficult to defend), I believe, was a consequence of having to decide the official number of shots that were fired before the event occurred in order to get the media cover-up story consistent and avoid conflicts. Witnesses who claimed to have heard more shots could be easily dismissed with the claim that they merely heard "echoes" from the surrounding high rise buildings.

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large
arms industry is new in the American experience ... In the councils of
government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential
for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We
must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic process."
-- President Dwight Eisenhower, farewell speech to the nation, January
17, 1961

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius
of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life
at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging
on a cross of iron."
-- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do
more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people
want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out
of the way and let them have it."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security,
unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you
would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is
a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things.
Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other
Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from
other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter to his brother Edgar, November 8,
1954

to believe Warren Commission and its "lone gunman" theory one must believe the single bullet theory created by Warren Commission attorney Arlen Specter (who was rewarded for his work by being made a US Senator from Pennsylvania)

the single bullet - or magic bullet theory is
the only way to pretend that one rifle was used to create all of the wounds, if you don't believe this claim then the Warren Commission thesis of the "lone nut" is invalidated

Memo to White House staffer Bill Moyers
regarding the need to coverup the assassination of President Kennedy
discretely written as the need for an official federal investigation

On November 25 1963, the day of the Kennedy funeral, Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo to Bill Moyers of the new Johnson White House. He had begun writing it the day earlier, within hours after Oswald's death at the hands of Jack Ruby.

The second paragraph stated: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."

Given that the authorities could not possibly by November 25 know these things to be true, and Katzenbach later admitted he knew very little at this stage, the memo is clearly advocating a political course irrespective of the truth of the assassination.

The motivation for this political course may be glimped in the succeeding paragraph: "Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat--too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced."

Katzenbach's memo advocated a public FBI report to satisfy this "objective," though he noted the possible need for "the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions." He ended by advocating a quick public announcement to "head off speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort."

To many observers, the Katzenbach memo provides the blueprint for the cover-up which followed.

For Oswald file! 2 copies
This was pulled together by ... in close conjunction with.... We furnished most of the source material, proposed many of the themes, and provided general "expertise" on the case. The Spectator article was written 23 Jan 1967

PSYCH

1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's Report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse, results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience, and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.

3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active, however, addressees are requested:

a. To discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing than Epstein's and comes off badly where contested by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)

4. In private or media discussion not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:

a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attacks on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, A.J.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Van der Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been much more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)

b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual eyewitnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent -- and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistic, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the commission for good and sufficient reason.

c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.

d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory; or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.

e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed-up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.

f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.

g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some more natural way: e.g., the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conducting 25,000 interviews and reinterviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)

5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the Report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

Jim Garrison's autobiography "On the trail of the Assassins"

Garrison conducted the only prosecution of a conspirator in the Kennedy
assassination (which was ultimately unsuccessful). His autobiography is
a fascinating expose of how the coup was conducted, who benefitted, who
covered it up, and how the lone prosecution was sabotaged by covert interests
and the media. Oliver Stone's famous film "JFK" is based on
Garrison's story.

today in America too much emphasis is given to secrecy, with regard to
the assassination of our President, and not enough emphasis is given to
the question of justice and to the question of humanity.
These dignified deceptions will not suffice. We have had enough of power
without truth. We don't have to accept power without truth or else leave
the country. I don't accept either of these two alternatives. I don't
intend to leave the country and I don't intend to accept power without
truth.
I intend to fight for the truth. I suggest that not only is this not un-American,
but it is the most American thing we can do--because if the truth does
not endure, then our country will not endure.
In our country the worst of all crimes occurs when the government murders
truth. If it can murder truth, it can murder freedom. If it can murder
freedom, it can murder your own sons--if they should dare to fight for
freedom-- and then it can announce that they were killed in an industrial
accident, or shot by the "enemy" or God knows what. ....
"I think that there are still enough Americans left in this country
to make it continue to be America. I think that we can still fight authoritarianism--the
government's insistence on secrecy, government force used in counterattacks
against an honest inquiry--and when we do that, we're not being un-American,
we're being American. It isn't easy. You're sticking your neck out in
a rather permanent way, but it has to be done because truth does not come
into being automatically. Individual men, like the members of my staff
here, have to work and fight to make it happen--and individual men like
you have to make justice come into being because otherwise is doesn't
happen.
"What I'm trying to tell you is that there are forces in America
today, unfortunately, which are not in favor of the truth coming out about
John Kennedy's assassination. As long as our government continues to be
like this, as long as such forces can get away with such actions, then
this is no longer the country in which we were born."
-- excerpt from closing statement of Jim Garrison in
the prosecution of Clay Shaw for participation in the conspiracy to murder
President Kennedy, February 28, 1969

Playboy interview of Jim Garrison, October 1967

PLAYBOY: Many of the professional critics of the Warren Commission
appear to be prompted by political motives: Those on the left are anxious
to prove Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy within the establishment;
and those on the right are eager to prove the assassination was an act
of "the international Communist conspiracy." Where would you
place yourself on the political spectrum -- right, left of center?

GARRISON: That's a question I've asked myself frequently, especially
since this investigation started and I found myself in an incongruous
and disillusioning battle with agencies of my own Government. I can't
just sit down and add up my political beliefs like a mathematical sum,
but I think, in balance, I'd turn up somewhere around the middle. Over
the years, I guess I've developed a somewhat conservative attitude --
in the traditional libertarian sense of conservatism, as opposed to
the thumbscrew-and-rack conservatism of the paramilitary right -- particularly
in regard to the importance of the individual as opposed to the state
and the individual's own responsibilities to humanity. I don't think
I've ever tried to formulate this into a coherent political philosophy,
but at the root of my concern is the conviction that a human being is
not a digit; he's not a digit in regard to the state and he's not a
digit in the sense that he can ignore his fellow men and his obligations
to society. I was with the artillery supporting the division that took
Dachau; I arrived there the day after it was taken, when bulldozers
were making pyramids of human bodies outside the camp. What I saw there
has haunted me ever since. Because the law is my profession, I've always
wondered about the judges throughout Germany who sentenced men to jail
for picking pockets at a time when their own government was jerking
gold from the teeth of men murdered in gas chambers. I'm concerned about
all of this because it isn't a German phenomenon; it's a human
phenomenon. It can happen here, because there has been no change
and there has been no progress and there has been no increase of understanding
on the part of men for their fellow man. What worries me deeply, and
I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America
are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It
will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans
evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work,
while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity.
But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability
to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state.
Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built
since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower
vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life.
The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to
the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen
the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered
by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying
sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced
to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend
to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar
signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus
and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is
creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more
effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going
to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms
goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What
happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically
destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can
be the same. I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in
the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America
I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion,
which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the
individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and
the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America
I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the
citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every
immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my
Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make.
But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating
the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office.
Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name
of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

[emphases added]

JFK by Oliver Stone

note: parts of this documentary are much better than other parts (such as speculating over the identities of the shooters)

From the Back Cover
A medical technician who was at the autopsy states categorically that
the body he saw was not the one shown in the official photographs. The
mortician who buried Lee Harvey Oswald reveals a startling discovery made
18 years later. A highly decorated Army officer says he was trained to
eliminate key witnesses... Forty years after JFK was shot in Dallas, controversy
rages around his assassination. The Men Who Killed Kennedy, an authoritative
six-part series drawing on exclusive interviews with highly placed government
sources and independent investigators, is the most comprehensive examination
of the case ever filmed.

The Complete Story in 6 Parts:
The Coup d'Etat - A medical technician casts doubts on the official
autopsy photographs, and photo analysis undermines the lone gunman theory.
The Forces of Darkness - See two shadowy figures on the grassy knoll,
and find out about the "lost" home movie that contained key
evidence.
The Cover-Up - An FBI agent confirms that evidence has been suppressed,
and a notorious criminal is confronted about his possible role.
The Patsy - Witness Oswald's reaction when charged with the shooting,
and the mortician who buried the alleged assassin reveals what he discovered
18 years later.
The Witnesses - The people who were there - but who the government chose
to ignore - tell their versions of what happened at Dealey Plaza.
The Truth Shall Set You Free - See conclusive proof that the official
autopsy photos were faked, and hear from an Army Colonel who says he
was trained to eliminate witnesses to the assassination.

interesting but not as good writers

caution: the "community currency" website, like many 9/11 "truth" efforts, started off very good but over time became sloppier with facts and perspectives. While there are a lot of things on that website that are not actually truthful, this commentary comparing the JFK coup with 9/11 complicity is still worth excerpting.

Recently, I saw the film J.F.K., again, and realized how insightful
it is into the world of covert operations, and saw how understanding
the assassination of President Kennedy, leads to insights into the why,
and how of the attacks which occurred on September 11th. In the film,
Mr. X, played by Donald Sutherland, meets with Jim Garrison, the New
Orleans District Attorney who bravely launched the only case against
one of the conspirators behind the assassination. Mr. X is based on
the actual person, Fletcher Prouty www.prouty.org who spent 9 of his 23 year military career in the
Pentagon (1955-1964): 2 years with the Secretary of Defense, 2 years
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 5 years with Headquarters, U.S.
Air Force. In 1955 he was appointed the first "Focal Point"
officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations
per National Security Council Directive 5412. He was Briefing Officer
for the Secretary of Defense (1960-1961), and for the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr. X patiently explains how special operations
work to Garrison in the film. In real life after he resigned from the
government in 1964, Fletcher Prouty, wrote many articles and two books-
The Secret Team, JFK, the CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John
F. Kennedy www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/, and spoke with my dear friend,
Dave Ratcliffe, who recorded their conversations and edited them into
a book entitled - Understanding Special Operations And Their Impact
on The Vietnam War Era 1989 Interview with L. Fletcher Prouty Colonel
USAF (Retired) www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/One of the key points
that Prouty, Garrison, Ratcliffe made in the film, book, real life,
was that the fingerprints of a special operation were the things that
"didn’t happen." For example in the J.F.K. assassination,
the Secret Service was called off that day, standard operating procedures
to protect the President "especially in hostile territory like
Dallas" were violated, something that only could have been done
at the highest levels of government, for example, by the General who
sent Prouty out of the way, to Antarctica, when Kennedy was killed in
Texas.

On September 11th, the most damning evidence pointing to the
complicity of top U.S. officials was the utter failure of our multi
trillion dollar Defense Department to stop those planes from crashing
into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was a violation
of the most standard operating procedures. General Myers, the top Pentagon
official at the time, testified that no planes were scrambled until
after the Pentagon was hit. There were no reprimands or enquiries, no
one lost their job for goofing up that day. Myers was then elevated
to the highest military post in the country. There had to have been
standdown orders issued at the highest level of government on that day.
This was never seriously examined or questioned by the mainstream press
or Congress! The alibi for the general failure of our expensive military/intelligence
complex "We were so surprised, totally unprepared…"
has been shown to be a complete lie.